Lost 11 inches of belly fat and 46lbs.
It wasn’t the first time I smiled and tried to hold back tears, after all I had been a “big girl” my whole life. My family doctor put me on my first low fat diet when I was 12 years old; it and the hundreds to follow didn’t work. Still, this time it was a little bit different, I was simply trying to squat down and stand back up, and I couldn’t do it. It was deeply embarrassing, and I wondered what the old guy coaching me must think of me. I was not yet thirty years old, 5’5 and weighed 210 lbs.
210 was not my top number, right after my child was born, I ballooned up to 240 lbs., and I spent the next few years bouncing back and forth between 215 and 200. My joints hurt, my back hurt, going up the stairs was a chore, tying my shoes required real effort, my belly almost touched the steering wheel of my car and my ass hung over the sides of my car’s seat. My weight was constantly eating at my mind.
A friend of mine had taken some pictures of me…I broke down and cried when I saw them. I was upset for weeks, my friend promised to never take a picture of me again. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognize the image…that person was not….could not be me.
I joined a gym over the years, took every class available, “worked out” for up to three hours at a time and it was always the same. Get on this machine, do hi reps, low weight, “after all, you don’t want to bulk”. I worked hard, very hard and I sweated hard and I was in constant pain. My knees hurt all the time, and sometimes they would have me do an exercise and shooting pains would go through my back and hips… and nothing much ever changed.
At the gym men and women would look at me, a familiar look of pity, humor, scorn and superiority. They would sometimes pretend I wasn’t there, I was a non-person. I did what everyone said to do, hi reps, low weight, lots of cardio, low calories…nothing worked, and the fat remained and the misery that came with it.
When you are fat, you spend a lot of time talking about how you are going to do something about it. During a conversation with a relative stranger, I asked him if he knew any personal trainers. He was obviously a strong guy, and older, so…my reasoning was anyone who was this old and this strong must know what he is talking about.
I explained my plan to him, lose enough weight to start running, then high reps and low weight because I didn’t want to get big and bulky. He asked me how that had worked for me in the past; He is not a particularly patient guy. He recommended a website and a book. He said buy the book, read it and do exactly what it says. He said if I had any questions, go the website and search around, and any question I could think of asking on this topic had been asked already and beaten to death in the forums.
He is a Starting Strength Coach, and he agreed to meet me at my gym. When I couldn’t squat down and stand back up, I tried to explain my hip was out, I needed to get adjusted, and maybe I wasn’t getting enough magnesium…. His matter of fact response somehow made things better.
“You have two major issues, you are fat and you are weak”, he said. “We will get you strong first and everything else will work out.”
I was prepared to be exhausted every moment, to be in constant pain, and to be screamed at like I was in some boot camp. Of course, that was not the case. I learned the squat, press, deadlift and bench. I wanted to start dieting right away, sort of attack my issue from all sides. The coach said no, he said one thing at a time. Eat some more protein if you can, cut back a little on carbs, but your body needs the resources to recover and adapt. Pretty quickly I was able to squat to depth and start adding some weights, my stomach muscles and C-section scar would often ache from forcing them to work.
Being in the gym with a Starting Strength Coach is a unique experience. There is ALWAYS a plan, there is ALWAYS an exact thing to do, with a specific purpose, designed to elicit a specific response. Each training event is part of a larger process of moving forward. The silly boys dropping weights and doing bicep curls, the girls on the leg curl, all either watch suspiciously from a distance, or sometimes slowly make their way over to ask his advice. NO ONE ever tries to kick you off the deadlift platform.
My lifts slowly moved up, and I lost five pounds of body weight in a month. My body was changing. Just as I was making real progress, a non -training related medical emergency hit. I was going to be away from the bar for 4 weeks. Again, my coach…this is no problem, get back at it when you return. You will never be as weak as you were before.
I returned to the gym, reset and started back at it. My coach said all problems can be dealt with under the bar, and as different personal and professional issues surfaced, I found this was true.
I wanted to drop some more fat and continue to get stronger. Following the one change at a time, while everything else stays constant rule, I tried walking in the morning, it affected my recovery. So I programmed HIIT on a rowing machine once a week, then twice a week, it didn’t impact my recovery. I had slowly adjusted my diet, after about six months, I loaded up an app on my phone, and started tracking my macros.
Now, according to my log book, it is week 46 of my training. 46 weeks since I could not perform a squat to depth. I am 30 years old, 5’5 and weigh 164 lbs. I squat 185 five by five, I deadlift double overhand 200 for five, press 70 five by five and bench 130 five for five. I have lost 46 pounds of fat, 11 inches of gut, 3.5 inches off each thigh and I am stronger than I have ever been. Could I have gotten stronger if I hadn’t spent a significant amount of time in a calorie deficit? Sure, However I was very fat, and I wanted to be strong and lean and not fat. My goals now are pretty simple, get stronger and drop a little more fat.
The SSC who helped me asked I not mention him by name; his position is this is my story, and a testimony to the effectiveness of the Starting Strength System. He said any of the SSCs could have helped me, if they couldn’t, they wouldn’t be a SSC. His stated goal from the beginning was to help me learn. A strength coach is not a personal trainer, they are there to help you learn and I have learned. I get on his schedule two or three times a month for him to check my form, make sure I haven’t picked up any bad habits. He sits and studies my log book in between sets.
Now at the gym, people ask me for advice. I want to attend the Seminar, improve my lifts, and learn to help others more effectively.
*Rip, I can not thank you enough for the time, hard work, and dedication you have put in to constructing this system. The book, website and videos have made getting ones health back attainable for anyone who is willing to learn. You have set a new standard for strength and coaching and haven’t been content to sit back and watch the flawed “work out” systems take advantage of people like myself. You not only gave me my life back but gave me a better one than I had before. The strength and holisticness of this system has touched every area of my life and will be an avid part of my child’s life and with hope part of my larger family’s life. . I owe you and your system a debt that I will never be able to properly repay.
The number one most important thing I learned… all of life’s problems can be solved under the bar.
